I include Warm upswith a Rubricas part of my daily routine. My goal is to allow students to work on Math Practice 3 each day. Grouping students into homogeneous pairs provides an opportunity for appropriately differentiated math conversations. Today's Warm Up- Tortoise and Hare Project Day 4 which has students explain how they know if a scenario is linear or non-linear.

Resources

Today is an extension that extends this project fully into the Common Core Algebra 2 standards. We begin with a think-pair-share discussing whether it was realistic for the animals to run at a constant speed for the entire race. I then share that each animal did adjust their speed during the race although their end times where correct.

The rest of the period is spent with students working in pairs to:

determine which of three functions (quadratic and exponential) best model each animal’s distance during the race (Math Practice 5)

Using the chosen models student then determine (different from prior lesson) at what point each animal met the other two and how this affects their story (Math Practice 2).

I walk around and provide scaffolding as needed. Some may need reminding that their calculator will be tremendously helpful in this activity. There is one function for each animal that is a best choice but not necessarily the only possibility. The key is that students provide their reasoning (Math Practice 3).